Nessa Weekly: The Stitchin' Bee

I finally got my April blocks for this quilting bee finished! This was hard to do, at first, just because I didn't really know where to start. Kelly, our queen bee for the month, sent us a whole bunch of bright colored fabrics and one piece featuring a comic strip. She is calling this her "Dysfunctional Family Quilt" which will be used as a beach quilt since her family frequents the very nearby beach in Florida. Our directions were that we could design any kind of block we wanted, as long as the comic was visible. And boy, are some of the ladies talented. you can check out the Flickr page for the group to see what some of them came up with. Talk about pressure to perform!

Anyhow, I had started off designing a block, which needed to be 12.5" x 12.5", made of four smaller 6.5" square blocks. This took me while to design, and account for seam allowances and imagine how it was all going to work. Then I made some prototype blocks so that I wouldn't mess up on the fabric Kelly gave me since that was the only material I had. Once satisfied, I made the blocks that did not have the comic strip. With those blocks in hand, I imagined how it would look with the final block and just wasn't feeling it. I think it would have been too crazy and too much going on. Since I didn't want to cut up the other blocks, I tried to think of what I could do with the remaining fabric, and some pieces from my own stash. This is what I came up with.

"Thanks babe, Mother'll never taste the arsenic!'

I made the square, by bordering the white/lavender dot fabric with the dark purple. The mini-pieced border is made of a strip of (unfinished) 1.5" squares and (unfinished) 0.75" squares, in the order of 1.5, 0.75, 0.75, repeat. Then another bigger dark purple border, finally outlined by 3" triangle squares pieced together. Finally, I appliqued the comic to the center of it. It's a bit wonky. I don't think I have ever done such fussy cutting and sewing ever before. I was definitely out of my comfort zone. But I am pretty proud of it. When I showed it to Ryan, he was definitely impressed that I came up with that. His reaction was really quite sweet actually. Anyhow, this was very challenging for me, but also very fun and I have already learned a lot! I am looking forward to Lisa's month next and what her assignment is.

Since I didn't cut up the other blocks, I sent them along as well since Kelly can still use them maybe somewhere in her quilt. There was one fabric that had brightly colored circles (reminded me of beach balls) about the size of 50 cent pieces. I cut some of the full circles out and appliqued them to the center of each of these "beach ball blocks".

These are 6.5" square blocks. These pics were snapped post applique- so some of the blocks still have indentions from my little quilting ring. I was too lazy and tired to get out the iron, fire it up and iron them out, when they were going to be folded up and put in a baggie for the mail. sorry.

This has been an adventure and I am looking forward to the next one.

This week has been crazy and I am exhausted. My weekend plans? sleep. Hope you are doing something more exciting!!